come down to lake pontchartrain

I FINISHED MY DEGREE

a more coherent post when I've had a chance to recover and let this realization properly sink in. fuck.

SO I'M BACK IN WALES YET AGAIN. After the explosions with my parents I'm sort of glad I left (because the night before I left my aunt decided it was HER turn to make me feel like a worthless piece of lazy ass which is always fun) even though it means the dawning of a new year and the fact that I'm supposed to be graduating in uhhhh 5 months? AHAHA. Fuck my life.

My room is still balls cold, and I have to resort to wearing gloves when I'm working up here on stuff. I actually used the heater for the first time in ages because oh my god I was so fucking cold under a winter duvet and a blanket and hats and gloves and socks and a kigu that I needed the extra warmth.


WHAT ELSE HAS HAPPENED...


OH YEAH

YOUNG AVENGERS CHILDREN'S CRUSADE ISSUE 4 CAME OUT and I was very disappoint. Come on Heinburg, Tommy is not 15, and I know you are fixing that but god. Way to make me feel skeevy about playing him for a second there fdjknhfjknfhd. Other than the horrifying lack of Tommy in that issue, I liked it a lot! Did not expect the ending and was all :O when it happened and blah blah blah everyone who this matters too is already all over this. HERP. Trust me for being late to the flail party over LJ but I assure you much flailing was done over twitter (which I have been using a lot more recently I think I am addicted) and AIM.

ALSO virtualdon gave me my late Christmas present, which is the Axel Formation Arts figure that is only available in Japan and I flipped out. I put him together straight away and oh my god I love his face so fucking much I am actually beside myself. I also got my presents from batfowl (THANK YOU SWEETIE!) She sent me a pretty bracelet and Cupcake rice paper toppers with fucking Shiba Inu puppies on them. They will be the most adorable cupcakes I will ever create I don't even.

And idk if I said this before but my flat mates pooled together and got me a Raikou plushie AND HE IS SO CUTE I DON'T EVEN??? I am forming an electric type plushie ARMY (I have a Jolteon, Ampharos, Elekid, Rotom and Raikou now :D Blitzle and Emonga are on the LIST as well as Luxray if I could ever fucking find it for less than a billion dollars) but I am glad in the knowledge that I'll never be as bad as this even though I am super jealous of like pretty much everything she owns.

Oh I just realised I am rambling. HERP.

ONE LAST THING I GUESS, I was saved today by my tutors who decided to extend the dissertation draft final for another 10 days, as I was really starting to work myself up into a state over the fact that I didn't do as much work over Christmas as I thought I would've. I'm going to aim to try and finish it this week and get a couple people to read it and I'm aiming to do the full 8,000 words to make it easier when the deadline comes around again. And we have deadlines in February and I have to do so much work that I'm thinking about setting up a 9-5 work regime to see if I can actually motivate myself every day to do SOMETHING. Wish me and my procrastinator of a brain luck guys.

It's going to be a bumpy year BUT HOPEFULLY it'll all be worth it in the end and I'll never have to write another fucking essay or use Harvard referencing ever fucking again. >:(


also I promise I wrote this journal not drunk even though it totally seems like I am.

MY LIFE HAS BEEN SO CRAZY LATELY!!!

On Wednesday, ormery came down to stay with me for a couple of days, and pretty much all of my flatmates, plus one virtualdon and Squeak went to see the new Harry Potter film. IT WAS SO GOOD I DON'T EVEN. The next one can't come fast enough!! It has to be my favourite so far. God, I love Luna so good, but was really upset they changed Dobby's VA. It bothered me a lot 8( But it was lovely to see it with everyone, and I loved having Squeak around. I missed his lovely face.

THEN my Dad called me to say that he managed to transfer the money he'd brought back with him from Bermuda to my bank account, which meant that I could pretty much buy a Mac whenever I wanted! SO FAST FOWARD TO SATURDAY, I went into Cardiff, and with Donya's help, I purchased a Macbook Pro with Apple Care for three years, and cried at all that money going in one swoop (even with almost £500 off for being a student). But oh my goodness it was so worth it. I have spent pretty much all of today TOUCHING IT GLEEFULLY and admiring how pretty it is and getting used to where the different keys are and new shortcuts (not that it's going to take me long to get the hang of, since I've been using macs for years). And. GOSH. It is so pretty I don't even. So worth the money. I have named it Cupcake because I am predictable. But now I have very light savings to last me till January. Which should be interesting. I had to open up icon commissions, but I doubt I'll get any. Would anyone be interested in art commissions for £5/£10? I'm not sure what kind they would be but I need the money :(

ANYWAY today has sort of being a crazy day of fail when it comes to our house. Because it's been so cold lately (about -2 Celsius for the past three days IN THE DAY TIME AND IT SNOWED WHAT THE CRAP) all of our external pipes are frozen. Which caused our washing machine to spit all it's water onto our kitchen floor. So our landlord came around and took off the frozen pipe outside, which means it's spurting water onto our pavement instead of our drain but it's a fix till the weather clears up. AND THEN not an hour later, we notice a huge puddle coming from under our boiler, and one of the pipes is dripping scarily fast. So we call him back and he comes back out and, again, it's because of one of the external pipes had frozen so the boiler condensation pipe got backed up and overflowed.

And then we realised the toaster had given up the will to live.

FML.

But anyway other than being cold and slightly damp and toasterless, I have a beautiful laptop, had a lovely week and I'm quite content. It's probably going to change because I have a deadline fast approaching and I have thirty seconds of test animations, a three minute animatic to do as well as a whole bunch of concept art and blog catch up, so the stress is kind of getting to me. SHOULD BE INTERESTING. And once I hand in, I get to go home for the winter holidays. Looking forward to that. BUT TILL THEN, WISH ME LUCK ON MY DEADLINE.

You'd think I'd learn to do my work on time 8|;

EDIT: ALSO ME AND peypea ARE WATCHING SEASON ONE OF SUPERNATURAL, AND FINN HUDSON'S ACTOR, CORY MONTEITH, IS IN THE WINDIGO EPISODE AND GETS EATEN BY A WINDIGO. AHAHA I NEVER NOTICED BEFORE but it was a funny realization.

I don't know what's wrong with me. First I love animation, and then I hate it, and after taking a long break from it I don't mind it. BRAIN MAKE YOUR MIND UP.

But seriously, we're doing a group project at uni right now, and I made it really clear from the start that I didn't want to do any animation, and I wanted to take a more pre-production side of things. Which I did, and I enjoyed! And now the deadline is looming, and I have lots of concept stuff to finish off, but since I'm the only other 2D 'trained' animator in our group (the other two are CG/Stopmotion) I've been given a couple of shots to finish off this weekend in time for the deadline. And the shots I got given are quite complicated, but when I sat down to start them on Friday, I sort of realized that I'd missed animating.

That's the second time this week it's happened--first when all the first years were having a crit in the studio I was working in (they were showing off their character performance pieces so like, run cycles, jumping, animal walk cycles etc) and it just... it got me so pumped that I asked the teacher for the brief to do in my own time since my showreel is really weak in that department. The first years have gotten so much more work than we had in our first year, and I'm friends with quite a lot of them.. I sort of wished I'd repeated first year, because they look like they are having a lot more fun, and I miss being taught by Matthew and Leoni (the only two teachers who are actually good at this stupid university).

I wish I could make my mind up about what I actually want to do. I mean, I do actually enjoy animating when I don't have HUGE deadlines and I've organized my time properly. But I also hate it with a passion, know that I'm not especially good at it, and prefer the preproduction stuff. RARRGHH.

I guess when I have to make my final film, we'll see which side of the work is stronger, and I'll work from there I guess.


But yeah, since I have all that concept stuff, scenes to animate and editing to do, I'll probably not be around much this week. Thankfully because there is four of us, the work isn't that stressful, but we need to get it done. I'm really proud of the look of the 2D stuff which was my idea and I'll probs post the thing when we finish, even though the stopmotion stuff is already looking a bit weird, because the director gave the model a really weird head--that I didn't design :| SIGH.

I am really looking forward to the next project though, which is sort of like a professional practice brief. We have to design business cards and cover letters (and I'm probably going to design a website too and maybe a mini portfolio and fjskdng) to send out to companies, and then we have to do a Live brief--which is basically designing those little idents that go in between TV shows on tv channels. (So like, the E4 estings, and the HIPPOS SWIMMING IN A CIRCLE on BBC1) And because I'm probably going to pick E4, it can be as random as I want it to be. It'll be nice to end this term on such a fun project.

/Goes back to animating someone standing up.


OH ALSO, I GOT SOULSILVER LAST TUESDAY AND FORGOT TO TELL ANYONE ON LJ.

IT'S FUCKING AWESOME even though I can't play it because of this looming deadline and I'm still in Violet City training my pokemans BUT IT IS STILL SO GOOD ;A;

First off, HALLO to the new people on my flist from the friending meme! I really should have an introduction post thing for when I do add people from those memes, like Oliver 8| BUT IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ME FEEL FREE TO ASK.

There are a couple of things I'm covering in this. Firstly, is AIM working for anyone else? This morning it's not letting me log on via AIM or Meebo, so I'm just checking it's everyone's AIM and not just me @@; AIM has kind of been a fail lately, so I'm hoping it's not just me 8|a;

SECONDLY, I posted icons over at chaicons last night~! Pokemon ones mostly, but I'm getting together a Young Avengers post. I'm a little hesitant with it though, since I decided it would be a good idea to try iconning the issues from the beginning, so a lot of the icons I made have been made a billion times. I don't know, I have like 80 of them, so it seems a waste not to post them. SHOULD I? I caved :|

THIRDLY:

( I drew some things )
DIS IS MY Lanturn, Lumos, as a human. I'm probs going to do this with all of my electric team because I enjoyed designing her and I might take some commissions if people are interested in chibi gijinka (or just chibi/pokemon/regular commissions in general) since I have no money for my American Adventure yet. WOULD ANYONE BE INTERESTED? ;A;

LASTLY, I get to go home on Friday. Omg I haven't been home since Christmas and I miss my family so much 8( But before then, I have to do a fuckton of pre-production work for the film I'm working on. Like literally. I have so much work that I've been stressed pretty much all the time, and since my sleeping patterns have decided to screw up again, I'm not getting much sleep either. YAYYY. But this time on friday I'll be on a train, so I have something to look forward to at least *___* BUT YEAH I might be a bit scarce till then because oh my god.

I SURVIVED. SOMEHOW.

Man, I never realized how much work I can actually get done if I don't have the distraction of the internet. I'm probably going to be giving away my cable a lot more in the future, because seriously I did so much work. Anyways, here's the final, which youtube decided to squish, yet again. I seriously don't know what it's problem is since I exported in 16:9. By the end of this project, my writing hand had stiffened into a horrific claw shape, and I have a blister on my pinky from the rubbing on the tablet, and it still hurts to use a pen BUT IT IS OVER.

I am so much better now that I don't have that to worry about.
Here is what I have been doing since I completed my work:

→ Slept
→ Played Pokemon and worked on filling my national dex
→ Watched Princess and the Frog
→ Took over 300 screenshots of Princess and the Frog
→ Made 135 icons (including human!Naveen, Lottie and Facilier) of Princess and the Frog, and I intend to make more since these are only from the first 20 minutes of the film.
→ Booked plane tickets to New York for this summers American Adventure. I still have to book internals, but I'm not doing that till April
→ More sleeping
→ Got grades back on last project, was pleasantly surprised with a C grade as I thought I'd failed /o/
→ Worked on CV for Wagamama
→ Had a bizarre dream about mermaids who looked like the creatures in Avatar but with fish tails, and who stole small children from schools, claiming them to be their own 'daughters and sons of the sea'. There was a trippy underwater grotto, and lots of blue sparkly mermaids and I don't even. Yeaaah.
→ Updated LJ

Thanks to everyone who posted support on my last journal. Although I didn't see it straight away, I was still checking my emails on my friends computer when I'd done a certain number of scenes, so it really helped uplift me when all other hope had been lost.

I love you guys so much ♥

I had a countersparking in my vicinity all weekend, and she was so lovely and adorable ♥ We hung out, watched Princess and the Frog (in HQ! THANKYOU JAMS) and then went to Cardiff and stuff. I really liked having her over, and now the flat is so lonely and empty :( Which I guess is a good thing since I still have a whole lot of work to do, but the distraction was nice whilst it lasted. MARIA YOU CAN COME BACK WHENEVER YOU WANT K ♥

Whilst we were in Cardiff though, we went to Wagamama and on the off chance, I asked if they had an vacancies for waiting staff. The waiter we had told me yes, and to bring my CV in and then they'd contact me about it! Wagamama and Starbucks are two places that I'd love to work (I'll probably change my mind once I'm there because customers lmao) so I'm really excited. I'll have to rewrite my resume and hand it in when I go back into Cardiff on Wednesday to see Sherlock Holmes again. I hope I get a job. It would be so helpful you have no idea, and when I got home in the holidays, I could always just transfer to the Wagamama in Tunbridge Wells, so it would be super handy.

On the subject of jobs too, Disney Interactive have sent around an application and creative brief for an year long internship in London that I'm pretty sure I'm going to apply to as well. Everyone keeps telling me to apply, even though I'm pretty sure I wont get it anyways, but I'll give it a go. It would be so cool to work for Disney--even if it's just as an intern. Aaa I'm excited about that too and I shouldn't be, sob. (but omg it would look so good on my resume and I would be working in london and living in london for a whole year and doing things like storyboarding and animatics and concept art and oh my god basically everything I want to do professionally SCREAMS)

I'm still gonna be scarce all this week. My teachers have lumped more work on us, and I still haven't finished that other thing, but I heard that a lot of my group still haven't finished either, which is a testament to how much work we had to do, if we're all struggling. I mean, silverbrumby123 handed her animation in a week late, and only 4/12 of us had actually handed in. Which is crazy. Hopefully I'll be finished by Wednesday though, because I seriously want to work on something new. That said though, I'm feeling good about 2010. Yeah. Really good. :)

EDIT:

Oh! And happy birthday scissorbite!

2D SPECIALISM → ROUGH DONE. Will colour and finish up over Christmas. (You need to scan these today, Pura)

some of the scenes are in desperate need of inbetweening, and at least three of them need retweaking and the timing is a little off but I'm overall proud of it. My tutor hated it though (which was the reasoning behind my last post, derp) but I'm going to try and make the coloured up version look fucking badass.

SOUNDSCAPE OF EVIL DOOM EVIL → DONE. In one evening. Fuck yes. But you aren't allowed to see it because it's got video of me in and I look awful.

Now all that's left is the scanning and colouring on the dinosaur animation and an Essay, but those aren't due till after Christmas break. Oh, and a tiny presentation thing for tomorrow, but I'm not worrying about that till later since it'll take like 5 minutes. And there was something else I had to do, but I can't for the life of me remember right now... in anycase.

I'm finally free.

/SLEEPS FOREVER

EDIT: oh also, my blood test went okay and I get the results tomorrow. But I now have this fucking huge blue and purple bruise on my arm and it looks so fucking nasty and was so painful and :C

surprise!
a holiday treat meme


Update on my animation: I should've finished all the rough by Wednesday, but that never happened because I've been really sick all this week. Figures. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish this in time, but I've also found out that the deadline hasn't actually been moved. It's still the 15th of January, but the teacher wants it all finished by the 15th of December. I already know one of our group isn't handing anything in @___@ But even if I don't finish it in time for next week, hopefully I'll be able to finish it over Christmas if I get my essay out of the way quickly. Of course, this is only a backup plan, in case I don't finish. I really want to finish 8|a

I've got two and a bit scenes to finish, both of which are sort of easy (the little bit isn't as much) but then I can go linetest everything and make sure it works. It better work. Or I'm going to be crying in frustration again, derp. And then it's onto lineart and colouring, then editing. I have no idea if I'm putting sound in @____@ I have no time! And then when I finish this animation, I have to move onto another one. Thankfully I have some sort of idea what i'm going to do (possibly watercolour Rorschach ink blots reacting to different noises) so it's not a complete lost cause. I'm just worried because I haven't done any of the research, and the official hand-in for that is before christmas. Something tells me I'm going to give up with my 2D and work on this other project this weekend :x

Wish me luck guys

Edit: ALSO! Does anyone who uses GPX Plus know what the hell the mystery counter is for? It's driving me insane not knowing.

So, at the beginning of this year we all had to chose a specialism that we would do for the next twelve weeks. I picked 2D digital mostly because I want to specialize in this in the industry and I wasn't sure if I wanted to do 3D just quite yet.

The tutor we have gave us all a project straight away - character performance! Which is awesome! - and sent us away to start work on it. All the while, the 3D and Stop motion students aren't exactly doing much. They have workshops, but other than that, no brief, no deadlines, and no idea that apparently we're all supposed to produce one minute of animation at the end of the twelve weeks.

We're almost six weeks in, and one of my fellow 2D-ers told me that apparently we have to have all the animation done by Tuesday where we're getting marked on all the rough stuff (the 2D specialism includes clean up and digital coloring, which we're given another six weeks to do). None of the other two groups are getting a crit or getting marked, and I only just started animating a couple of days ago because I was pretty sure I had till at least next Friday to finish everything up. To make matters worse, I'm going home this weekend. And not coming back till Tuesday afternoon. And apparently, this crit is worth half our overall grade.

I'm just sort of... astounded about how extremely unfair this is. Our tutor told us there would be a crit, but not that it was going to be worth any part of our overall grade and on top of that, none of the other groups are getting marked. Hell, none of the other groups actually have any WORK, and I've basically been living in the studio all this week, trying to get stuff done. And it's not going to get done.

There's no way I can produce 30 seconds of animation tonight. I can give it a go but, it'll most likely be horrible quality, and I'm kind of twitchy about that. I can always take my lightbox home with me and do some work at home, but by the time I get back to uni I wont have time to linetest it. And it's not like I'd actually do work at home since it's my first time since I started uni that I'd be going home AND my Aunt from Bermuda is over and I'll be spending my time with her. All I can do is try and get as much done as I can, and put it all together on a really rough animatic that I did. So it would be really incomplete, and some scenes would just be keyed, but it would give an idea of what I want it to look like if I was given another week.

I'm hoping that a lot of the other guys are in a similar boat as me, because seriously. I'm going to be so unfairly fucked otherwise.

FML